Kill the past, present and future with Suda51

destructoid.com:

[Art by OThatsRaspberry]

Before creating No More Heroes, Shadows of the Damned, Killer7, and countless others, Goichi “SUDA51” Suda worked in a mortuary. Then, almost overnight, he became a game director. His primary qualification? Confidence. An outsider to the industry, he made waves from the very start, using the otherwise by-the-book Fire Pro Wrestling franchise to tell a story of nihilism and self-destruction.

Twenty-nine years later and he’s still doing things his own way. The biggest difference now is, he’s got experience on his side. And the money probably doesn’t hurt either. Last year, Grasshopper Manufacture (Suda’s studio) was acquired by NetEase, a game publisher with an estimated value of 63 billion dollars.

As a massive fan of Suda’s work, I was afraid that this change in business partners may lead him to make more conventional games. From the sounds of this interview with Japanese site Den Famitsu Gamer, (posted here in English for the first time via a translation from Grasshopper themselves), we won’t have to worry about that.

This detailed account of his career — packed with exclusive reveals about his past, present, and future — points to this new “NetEase era” being the most exciting, unhinged chapter in his story yet.

Den Famitsu Gamer: The reason for this interview is that Grasshopper Manufacture has become part of NetEase Games, and have started recruiting staff, but what was the original intention behind the founding of Grasshopper?

SUDA51: During my time at Human Entertainment, I thought of myself as a director. I took over the Fire Pro Wrestling series, handling two games. Next, I was put in charge of the Twilight Syndrome team, which was on the brink of collapse, and reorganized it. Which is to